How DirtTotem started their logo design journey

Company name

Dirt Totem Productions

Overview

Dirt Totem Productions is a film and television production company primarily focused on the web series market. Our first series was The Sanctum, which can be found on http://www.koldcast.tv/#/show:the_sanctum - it's a dark, edgy series about superheroes with drug addictions. Our second series will be coming out this fall, and it's about a post-apocolyptic future AFTER the zombie hordes have been tamed. It's as dark as the Sanctum, but it also has episodes that are pure comedy.

Not all of our series will be sci-fi/fantasy oriented, however - we have a comedy series in pre-production that takes place in a modern day baseball stadium, in the comedy vein of Scrubs. We also have a few animated ideas we might like to try out in the next couple of years, so we will want the logo to be broad enough to cover a wide range of different story ideas.

The company name comes from a description of our founder, who was told "you're so grounded, it's like your Indian totem is dirt," but we DO NOT want a totem pole or any Indian/Native American themes. We're looking for something that expresses the fundamental nature of dirt, how creativity grows out of a grounded place like plants grow out of dirt.

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

Our target audience is everyone, but especially ages 16-50, all ethicities, and as our series are on the web, all countries. Each show will have a different demographic, obviously, but as a company we'd like to have them all fit comfortably under our wings....

In the future, we will very likely move into the television and film markets. Those markets have a longer history and therefore the logo needs to be robust enough to attach itself to an Academy-award nominated film. We should be so lucky.

Requirements

Our previous logo was a seedling growing out of rich, loamy soil. While it was lovely, it made us look like a seed catalog.

Our website (which we will run a new contest for in a few months), will have a background of dark dirt with little hidden prizes in it, like colorful tin toys from the 1920's, foreign coins, laser guns... little pockets of awesome in the soil. The logo should complement that idea, without looking like a seed catalog.

While we don't want to put any barriers to creativity, we would be surprised if a cartoon-style logo was the winner - it might be better not to waste your time in that direction.

We want "Dirt Totem" to be a part of the logo, but it's up to you whether "Productions" is or not.

We need a vector-based image as well as a .psd image.

We need a black and white version of the image as well as a color version.

We are not looking for an animated logo, but the logo will most likely be animated in the future, so something with an intrisic need to change or move would be helpful, though not necessary (i.e. balloons rise, apples grow and rot, trees rustle in the breeze, balls bounce - although none of those are meant to be suggestions for the logo, just an idea of what we mean by intrinsic movement).

And again, NO TOTEM POLES.

We will be looking at the logo entries daily and providing commentary regularly. Good luck!